Skyrora hot fires scaled-down orbital rocket in Scotland

Skyrora has completed a 45-second static hot-fire test of a scaled-down version of its Skyrora XL orbital launch vehicle at Machrihanish on the west coast of Scotland, according to the company.

The test vehicle was built to validate subsystems and components similar to those intended for the full-size rocket, and the firing gathered data on the pressurisation system alongside engine characteristics including propellant flow rate and chamber pressure. According to Skyrora, initial data indicates the subsystems operated successfully throughout, and the engineering team is collating and analysing the results before conducting a second test.

Dr Jack James Marlow, the company’s chief operating officer, said: “You don’t build confidence in an orbital launch vehicle by waiting until the finished rocket is on the launchpad. You build it through thousands of decisions, measurements and tests along the way. This scaled-down XL system lets us test and validate the technology, subsystems and components together, understand how they perform and make improvements before scaling up to the full vehicle. Our approach is simple: test, learn, refine and test again, so that when Skyrora XL reaches the pad, we have confidence grounded in evidence.”

The company describes its method as testing early, testing repeatedly and testing systems together before scaling them up, on the basis that problems found at small scale are cheaper and quicker to fix than problems found late. Work will progress through larger and more demanding trials before anything is integrated into the full vehicle.

Skyrora XL is a three-stage rocket designed to carry small satellites into low Earth orbit. The company is headquartered in Scotland and designs, manufactures and tests its vehicles and engines at Cumbernauld, with a wider programme covering the Skylark L suborbital vehicle, propulsion work and additive manufacturing.

In 2025 Skyrora became the first British launch vehicle manufacturer to receive a launch operator licence from the Civil Aviation Authority, permitting a suborbital launch of Skylark L from SaxaVord Spaceport on Unst in Shetland.

Machrihanish, on the Kintyre peninsula, was a Royal Air Force station and a NATO forward operating base during the Cold War, and its runway remains among the longest in Europe. The site has since been taken into community ownership and hosts a range of engineering and aerospace tenants, Skyrora among them.

Domestic launch has been given weight in defence terms that it did not carry a decade ago. Lord Coaker told the House of Lords this week that British national security depends on freedom of action in space, including the ability to protect British and allied space assets, and that investment is going into resilience through the UK Space Strategy and the Defence Investment Plan. Sovereign launch matters to that argument because a satellite replaced quickly after being lost or degraded is worth considerably more than one that has to wait for a slot on somebody else’s rocket.